Perforce Software today released six resolutions for software companies
to consider when managing their development environments. The
resolutions encourage companies to maintain well organized codebases and
development processes to foster their growth.

“The new year is an ideal time for every organization to take an
inventory of what is working well and find ways to improve—and there’s
no better place to start than at the very foundation of the code,” said
Randy DeFauw, technical marketing manager at Perforce. “In my experience
with our customers, employing these software practices not only results
in fewer issues down the road, but a more manageable codebase.”

Perforce’s six recommendations for 2013:

Deliver like Facebook: Facebook leads its industry because it
delivers improvements to its site daily. Replicating this strategy is
recommended, and easier to do now that the software tool stack can
match that velocity. Even if companies are not building a
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, product can still rapidly
evolve internally without being formally released to customers.
Harnessing the ability to deliver enhancements quickly will buy
companies a considerable competitive advantage in their respective
sectors. Added bonus: nothing keeps developers happier than seeing
their code show up as live improvements in the product.

Take Agile cross-functional: Agile isn’t just for developers
anymore, and companies should not limit its use to their software
teams. DevOps was all about bridging the gap between development and
operations, and companies will find greater success if their entire
team is responding as quickly to new requirements as the development
team. Consider introducing agile project management to non-techies
such as Sales, Marketing and Human Resources teams.

Get everyone on the mother ship quickly: A software company’s
two most valuable assets are its employees and its intellectual
property. Do not operate them in silos. Instead, reuse IP wherever
possible and make sure teams can work with each other. If talent is
being acquired by purchasing a startup, ensure their past work can be
incorporated into the existing system in a week, not a year. Let them
keep using the tools they are accustomed to, even if it means running
something more enterprise-ready in the background.

Look before leaping into the cloud: The low costs, infinite
scalability and minimal administration requirements make the cloud
seem appealing to any company. The reality, however, is that
performance, ownership and reliability issues need to be considered
before deploying to the cloud. If employees are asking for a
cloud-based solution, figure out why. Do they want Dropbox because
there is no decent place to store their design documents and test
plans? That can be fixed without cloud services.

Be realistic: Engineers are practical people. Lay out clear
goals with a reasonable time frame. If current delivery cycles are a
year, they cannot be shortened to a week overnight. However, reducing
the timeframe from a year to three months is indicative of significant
progress and achieves buy-in for the next step.

Study the America Invents Act: A major change to U.S. patent
law is going into effect in March 2013. To prevent potential
intellectual property lawsuits, it is critical to study and fully
understand the nuances of first-to-file, prior use and other looming
changes. Have a plan in place for adjusting software processes (from
initial design through market introduction) to meet the changing legal
framework. Companies using open source software should take particular
care to ensure they are in compliance with all the licensing and
copyright provisions.

For more than a decade, Perforce has powered the world’s most demanding
development environments, enabling thousands of organizations to manage
and grow their codebase successfully. In addition to source code,
Perforce enterprise version management products help teams work in
concert on various digital assets including documents, multimedia,
spreadsheets, images and more.

Free for Up to 20 Users, Open Source Projects and Educational
Institutions

Perforce makes it easy for small companies and start-ups to benefit from
enterprise-class software version management. The complete Perforce
product family—including the new Git Fusion solution for Git
repositories—is available at no cost for up to 20 users or workspaces.
Perforce also is available
at no cost for open
source projects and educational
institutions.

Perforce Software enables teams to version everything. Perforce
enterprise version management products help teams work in concert on
important digital assets including software code, documents, multimedia,
spreadsheets, images and more. They are unique in their ability to
handle large and distributed collections of content, enabling higher
productivity, lower costs and improved security and compliance. Perforce
is now making it easy for everyone to take advantage of enterprise
version management. The company is headquartered in Alameda, California,
with international operations in the United Kingdom, Canada and
Australia. For more information, visit www.perforce.com.

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